


The Serpent

by Mimine101



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, F/M, Female on Male Rape, Implied Incest, Minor Sharon Carter/Steve Rogers, Not Black Panther (2018) Compliant, Not Sharon friendly, Not Wanda Friendly, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Rough Sex, Some male on female non con possibly triggering, not Wakanda friendly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-22
Updated: 2018-08-22
Packaged: 2018-10-22 12:39:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10697193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mimine101/pseuds/Mimine101
Summary: There was a red cloud around her entire bed. Leaking magic again, it happened quite often after the RAFT.A sigh."Wanda, are you in pain?" He pushed through his fear and stepped inside the red cloud, close enough to see Wanda's skirt bunched around her waist and her hand busy between her legs.





	1. Chapter 1

There were cracks on the ceiling. Cracks and cobwebs so thick that in parts it was hard to distinguish which was which. It didn’t help that Wanda’s room was dark, the curtains and rickety wooden shutters closed to protect from the relentless sun, the heat that the ceiling fan just mixed around not offering any real reprieve.

Wanda had the room all to herself while Steve, Sam, Scott and Clint had to make do in the other room, a mostly bare living room, painted a cheerful yellow, with colorful, threadbare carpets on the floor and a constant, muggy heat. It was as if the heat was clinging on them no matter what they did, they left the windows open but there was no night breeze, at night their body heat and combined breaths just added to the oppressive atmosphere. 

There are pictures in some of the leftover furniture in the living room. A smiling girl in a school uniform and an old man with a white beard and large, expressive eyes.

In Wanda’s room there was just a mattress and a closet that she refused to use. Her few clothes were strewn around the room, splotches of black ink on the light brown linoleum floor.

“Look at me”, she commands and he does, staring up at blood red eyes glittering behind the curtain of her hair. He sees his own left hand against her creamy breast squeezing firmly. Her other breast jiggles freely with her movement, the pink pucker of her nipple still wet from his mouth. When did he do that, he doesn’t even remember.

She rotates her hips in a circular motion then gasps and focuses in one spot. She bears down on him angled like that again and again as though she’s scratching an itch with his cock.

“You feel so good,” she murmurs, increasing her tempo now, rising until he’s almost out of her then slamming down again. He raises his head slightly, as much movement as she allows him, and stares at the spot where they are joined. Pink skin, puffy with arousal and glistening with her juices. He tries to buck his hips, plunge harder into that wet heat but she keeps him pinned down, riding him, chasing her own pleasure. He loses sight of their connecting point as she presses her open palm against her clitoris. He hisses as a fingernail catches him in an intimate spot but the stinging pain is washed away in the roar of pleasure.

He can tell she is close. She’s keeping him in her longer and longer to work him internally, milking his cock with her undulating inner walls. He’s gone soon enough, as much as he grits his teeth and tries to think of anything else, as much as he tries to tell himself that his desire, his come shooting up into her was all her doing it’s still yet another betrayal from his body. A vague thought hits him of a child resulting from this coupling as he still feels himself spurting the last of it into her heat. She is still keeping him in her, squeezing, reluctant to let go of his quickly softening cock. She collapses on top of him sweaty and purring with pleasure. He tries moving but even at that moment of her incoherent orgasm she hasn’t eased her control. She finally lets him slip out, wet from their combined fluids and the smell of sex hits him full force. Her face gets closer to him and all he can do is close his eyes as her lips touch his. Tears squeeze out of his closed eyelids.

Her sweaty skin on top of his presses on spots that start making themselves known with a sharp ache. Scratches on his chest and his thighs from her black lacquered nails. He badly wants to use the bathroom but he still can’t move at all, wilted and dirty. Another tear runs down his cheek and he feels Wanda’s hot little tongue lap at it.

“It must have been so long for you,” she murmurs. “It isn’t natural to deprive yourself. Sex is a biological function like any other. It’d been over two years for me. Since Pietro…” her voice breaks.

With her own twin… How long? He doesn’t even want to know. She never had a chance at a normal life, she doesn’t know any better… His excuses for her and his explanations ring hollow even in his own mind. There’s always a choice… there’s always…

Suddenly she covers them with her bedsheet. Steve barely hears the approaching footsteps over the pounding of his heart. 

“Oh man, you couldn’t even close the door properly?”

“Oops,” she giggles after Sam retreats to the kitchen if the sounds of banging cupboards are any indication. “I’ll go freshen up.” Her nose scrunches in distaste. “You should too. And we should air this room a bit.”

LET ME GO! He screams inside his own mind but nothing makes it to his lips. Eventually she comes back, fresh smelling and changed and starts straightening up her room. Finally he can move again. He grabs his clothes and clumsily puts them on then escapes to the bathroom.

Wanda hasn’t left him any hot water. She never does.

He’s wearing a towel around his waist and brushing his teeth when Sam pokes his head from the bathroom door.

“Interesting development. Clint’s gonna shit bricks, man. Wouldn’t want to be you when he finds out.”

Clint and Scott are out on a “mission”. Pretty close-lipped about the details and most likely to return with some sort of loot. Steve has given his tacit approval since he couldn’t quite admit that he couldn’t keep his team fed and with a roof over their heads, even such as it was. Which was actually not even that bad for Mali.

Steve rinses his mouth with the bottled water, spits and straightens up again, trying to avoid the pale, miserable man string back at him from the mirror. The scratches on his chest have healed already.

“Sam, I didn’t…”

The other man raises his hand. “I really don’t want to hear about it. Stuff happens when people are cooped up like this. For all that you call her a kid, biologically you’re not that far apart in age. No judgment here.”

He pictures himself telling Sam what happened but nothing comes out. He wonders it is a mental block of some sort or just shame.

She had a collar around her neck when he found her. He hooked his fingers under it and snapped it off her as if it were nothing.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Again, please heed the warnings. This is not a happy story.
> 
> Edited to add: Or you can flame me... that works too *eyeroll*

_“Wanda are you sick?”_

_There is a reddish cloud around the entire bed, as though it was suspended against a majestic sunset. Leaking magic again, it happened often after the RAFT._

_A sigh._

_“Are you in pain?” He pushes through his fear to get closer to the red cloud, close enough to see Wanda’s skirt bunched around her waist and her hand busy between her legs._

_“What the…” he takes a step back, fear and pity hitting him in sickening waves. Is she that far gone? Along with it all, a feeling as though the bottom of his stomach falling down and a stirring in his crotch he won’t acknowledge._

_She turns to face him then, red, devil eyes falling on him shamelessly, her thighs spreading even more. Come join me, her body whispers to him and he realizes he’s taken a step forward before he manages to tear his eyes away. “This is really inappropriate”, he forces past a dry throat. “I’ll leave you alone.” It’s simple, he’ll just turn around and leave. He pictures it in his head but his feet stay rooted. Then he watches with horror as he approaches the bed, as he lets that red cloud settle around him._

_He tears off his T-shirt and shucks down his jeans along with his underwear. Wanda’s fingers are burning hot as they wrap around his cock. Her mouth is hotter and her entire body is rocking up and down as she closes her lips around him in, still riding her own fingers. He stands at the doorway and watches the scene, he escaped, didn’t he? He made his excuses and ran out of there. That sigh, it didn’t come from him, he’s merely imagining the wet slide in that sinful, red mouth until he hits the back of Wanda’s throat._

_Dream!Steve whimpers in protest as she pulls back until he pops out then pushes him down flat onto the mattress. Steve watching from the doorway tries to protest, to say once more how wrong this is but nothing comes out of his mouth. The red is everywhere around him, on him, Wanda giggles and covers his body with her own and in Steve’s eyes and his body and even inside his head there’s nothing but red._

He wakes up and everything has a dreamlike quality, a terrible, disturbing wet dream like he would sometimes get as a teenager and run to hide all evidence from his mother. It is a very vivid and very explicit nightmare, it’s probably cause of this heat and the strange spices he has been eating.

A false note rings when he goes to the bathroom and sees his clothes soaking. The clothes he was wearing yesterday, he had to wash them, had to… He has an urge to just stuff them in the trash and he nearly does it but then settles for putting off washing them.

It all crumbles with one sly look from Wanda as she sits next to him on the breakfast table and casually places her hand on his thigh. It burns his skin over his sweatpants and it takes everything he has in him not to leave the table right there and then. Clint and Scott are still gone and Sam doesn’t or pretends not to notice.

Steve lies that he’s gotten some intel from T’challa and manages to leave the apartment without exchanging more than two words with Wanda. Sam is pleased, he considers the King an ally. Steve isn’t so sure, besides a monthly report on Bucky (no change, nothing promising enough to be worth waking him up) T’challa hasn’t bothered much with them.

For a moment Steve truly wishes he could ask for T’challa’s help with this. It seems so much easier than flipping open the little black phone, that silent hunk of plastic blinking innocently its green, fully charged light. There’s only one contact programmed in it and several draft texts that he’d chickened out of sending.

In the first call he makes all he manages is to leave an empty voicemail, nothing but his labored breathing as he tries harder and harder to utter even a single word.

In his second try he hangs up right before the voicemail kicks in.

He is trying to convince himself to press the call button again when the phone rings, startling him so badly he almost drops it. He picks up the call and brings the phone to his ear but still can’t talk.

“Are you ok? Can’t you speak?” Tony sounds mostly bothered but with an undercurrent of gruff concern.

“I can speak,” Steve whispers. He can’t quite bring himself to say he’s ok.

There’s a brief silence from other end of the line. Nothing but Tony’s carefully measured breaths. “Well, why are you calling?”

“It’s Wanda.”

“What did she… Are there casualties? FRIDAY, you told me you had an eye on Mali!” _There’s nothing, Boss,_ the AI’s cool tones are faint over the phone.

Steve grips the plastic harder mindful not to crush it. Of course Tony would know exactly where they are…

“It’s not… It’s not a major incident…” How strange is it that Tony’s first thought was that Wanda had done something and not that something may have happened to her. Or perhaps not strange at all.

“Well, what is it then?”

“She was wearing a collar back at the RAFT. Did you make it?”

He hears Tony draw in a couple of calming breaths. “Great, you call me just to throw accusations at me, what else to expect from you lot,” and the worst is that Tony doesn’t even sound angry, just resigned. “No, I didn’t make it.”

“I’m not… It’s not an accusation, Tony.”

“Mind telling me what the fuck it is then?”

Steve presses his knuckles against his forehead. “Could you replicate it?” He’s curled in towards the little phone in his hand, holding onto it desperately. The afternoon sun hits him mercilessly yet he feels so cold.

“What did she do, Steve?” The gentle tones, this man that very rarely came to the surface, those moments when he would call him Steve and search his eyes ready to help, to try and share the burden. This Tony that Steve pushed aside, ignoring his friendship, refusing most of his gifts bristling at his grand gestures.

“You knew, didn’t you?” Steve whispers. “Isn’t that the true reason why you retired? Why Bruce left and stayed gone? Both of you knew.”

“What is it that we knew?”

“What she was. What she could do.”

There’s silence from the other end of the line so Steve pushes on. “She hurt me.”

“What did she do?”

“She…” Steve feels like he doesn’t have enough breath to get the words out but does it anyway. “She forced me. She said I wanted it and it’s true, parts of me were completely on board with it but…”

A sharply indrawn breath and a curse are Tony’s only replies.

Steve closes his eyes and goes on, words tumbling out of his mouth now, practically out of his control. “And, you know, Tony, this is embarrassing, I’ve never told anyone. Biologically I’m past thirty and really I should have done it by now but I just… I wanted it to mean something. Before the serum I wasn’t much to look at and after… well there was Peggy. And even though some of the girls at the USO were practically throwing themselves at me I worried that perhaps they were after the serum so I always held back. And after I woke up from the ice everything was just so different that I just never… I’m not even religious but I wanted it to mean something.” Steve claps his hand on the receiver as a sob forces itself past his throat. He manages to put a lid on the rest of them, straining to hear Tony’s voice.

“I’ll be there tomorrow,” Tony says finally.

“Tony, she’s dangerous.”

“Don’t worry. I can handle her. I’m bringing a new friend.”

“What about the rest of us?” Steve blurts out. He can taste shame at the back of his throat, a bitter, rusty taste. They trusted him. They followed him and now how does he repay the others? He should have been stronger than this.

“Don’t care about the rest of you. Go, keep doing your thing.”

“You could pick me up too. I won’t fight you. I never wanted to fight you,” he gives out a breathless laugh and stuffs his wrist in his mouth trying to push everything back.

“Yeah…” Tony muses. “You probably believe that.” His tone gentles. “Listen, what happened… I’m sorry this happened to you. Don’t bear the burden all by yourself, ok? Talk to the others.”

 _Don’t be my problem,_ Steve hears. It’s dusty in the square, half of Bamako has no asphalt roads and it often gets so very dusty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this is it. My first time ever writing rape but I guess canon Wanda inspired me. Leave me a comment if you liked it. Con crit is also more than welcome.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Well, with Infinity War around the corner I figured I didn't want to leave these two afternath chapters in my computer. WARNING: This is not a nice story. There is some rough/rapey sexual activity going on, stay away if that's triggering for you. It's not a happy story. If you're a Steve/Wanda fan, this is not a story for you. If you are a Steve/Sharon fan, this is not a story for you. Please heed the warnings.
> 
> I'd love to get some feedback. Please also tell me in case you think there are any warnings I missed.

He leads an unsuspecting Wanda into her ambush with a sad story of kidnapped orphans. It’s over very quickly with Sam out of it for the most part after a particularly vicious repulsor blast that hit him so hard it forced him into a somersault mid-air followed by a hard landing. There is red-eyed fury and screams from Wanda then a quiet acceptance and tears after she meets Steve’s eyes. Tony never raises his faceplate and his caped companion barely speaks except to order Steve out of his way. Everything is over in a matter of minutes.

He hides again with Sam who sends a coded message to Clint and Scott. Then another. Their teammates’ undercover mission stretches on and on with no news until eventually Steve figures out that they abandoned them to be with their families.

“So what are we now, exactly, Steve and Sam’s Avenging Duo?” Sam mocks him but doesn’t leave even after Steve tells him he should. They hide, hunted like animals, hungry and wet, how could it rain so much in a country that has a desert? And one night Sam lets him have it “What are you gonna do sell me out to Stark too?” he goads. Steve answers that with a punch and tears of rage but Sam still doesn’t leave, just holds on to Steve’s hands and whispers soothing words and there’s a strange keening sounds, like an animal in pain, then a litany of “Sorry, I’m so sorry” and he wants to add “Don’t leave me too” but the way he’s holding onto Sam’s shirt is probably getting that one across.

“You need help,” Sam says gently. A trickle of blood runs down his chin mixing with his sweat and the miserable rain that’s on everything. “Help beyond what I could give you. Why don’t you just call Stark on your secret phone. Get him to pick us up. He can even repulsor me again if it makes him happy.”

The phone… Steve had come close to calling a couple of times since Wanda got picked up and ended up leaving exactly one voice message, just a choked off “thank you”. Yet Sam knows about it.

The phone rings the next day, helps them save face and not call to surrender. It’s Natasha telling them to come home, back to the Compound, they’ve been pardoned.

Steve wishes someone had given him a heads up. She’s there. Going around freely, almost always with Vision by her side. She gives Steve a warm smile in welcome, dim and innocent and he can barely hear her over the ringing in his ears. _Her_ _nails scratched on his tender parts as she pulled him in her. He laid there paralyzed and helpless and he just took it, he took it all..._ He realizes he’s staring as her eyes widen in alarm. “Steve, are you ok?”

“Just a long trip” he manages.

There are metal embellishments in her hair. It takes a while for Steve to realize that they are embedded to her skull.

“Her penance,” Stark explains later. “She isn’t even sure what she did but she knows she needs to be controlled.”

They are in Stark’s office, Steve’s old office, completely redecorated. How petty, couldn’t Stark have picked a different room?

“She doesn’t remember,” Steve repeats dully.

“Nope, not a thing.”

“And what, that makes everything ok?”

“Well, not for you, of course but what would you have me do? She had a break with reality.”

“So Vision is what, her guard now?”

“Her friend.”

Stark has aged in the past year, grey hair, mostly grey beard, a yellowish cast to his skin and he’s so thin his wrists are delicate like a woman’s, like Steve could snap them with two fingers. Steve’s rage shimmers helplessly under his skin as he fights for control. Tony is dealing with so much, he doesn’t need this on top of everything.

He storms out of the office determined to make everything alright again. He trains with the others, gracefully accepting his demotion to team member. He avoids Natasha’s shrewd gaze and Sam’s insistence for him to see the team shrink. Steve’s fine, just fine and everything is under control.

He seeks out Sharon Carter, jokes to her that they will have to meet at the Compound as he is still under house arrest. He tries and tries to see traces of Peggy in her wide blue eyes, bottle blond hair and thin lips. Their mouths meet and he touches her softly, her hair, the back of her delicate neck. She takes her top off and lies back on the couch with a smirk, guiding his hesitant hand to her breasts. Firm and warm, she feels so tender and vulnerable under him yet his heart is pounding with fear and his palms are sweating. He’s soft.

“Be still,” he orders and that’s better, it’s better if she doesn’t move, if she just takes it and he squeezes harder on her breasts, warm skin, malleable  in his hands. She tries to comply at first, throws her head back and closes her eyes. He can smell her arousal and he pulls down her tight jeans. She shimmies to help him then grabs his hand to press his palm against her mound. He feels her wetness over lavender lace as she arches her back in pleasure, whispering an encouragement.

“Don’t move,” he barks at her again, fists her underwear harshly. _Don’t move, take it. Just fucking take it._

  
He’s getting there, still only half hard, heart racing, his mouth so dry he can barely speak. He slips in his thumb in that warm wetness, Wanda had been so perfect, tight like a velvet fist around him, so sweet…

“The fuck is wrong with you?” Sharon yells, twisting back from him. Startled he searches her face.

He doesn’t know. What’s wrong with him. He lets her, of course he does, he never meant to scare her. Sharon is a good girl. He realizes he’s fallen onto his knees on the floor, breathing hard. She’s pulling on her clothes, quickly buttoning up and fastening, it would be almost funny if not for her stuttered breaths and too wide eyes.

“Let’s… let’s just forget about this, ok? We’re better off as friends.”

He barely hears her over the roar of his blood in his ears but he manages to nod back. “I’m sorry,” he wants to say but nothing makes it past the constriction in his throat.

After she’s left it hits him just how much younger than him she truly is. She’s of a generation that could have been his granddaughter. And Peggy… how he dirtied Peggy’s memory. Next thing he remembers he’s in the bathroom hugging the porcelain, he’s barely eaten anything to throw up and soon his retching turns into sobs.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So this is it. The 4th and final chapter. I'm very happy I managed to finish this fic. Sorry I was so late. I had written the chapter and couldn't find the time to type it out (I write longhand). Thank you for your patience!
> 
> Warnings for this chapter. I haven't watched Black Panther. My impresion from Wakanda is from IW and probably very inaccurate. I don't particularly like Wakanda or T'challa. Maybe that will change if I do manage to watch BP at some point. This is not IW compliant but there is some stuff from there. Not really spoilers, though. There's Bucky in this chapter and Steve and Bucky friendship.
> 
> I won't even bother saying I don't want flames, just do whatever you want. Actual comments and constructive criticism will be treasured.

Sharon breaks up with him via text message. “We’re just not compatible. I’m not judging you but I’m not into what you like in bed at all. Let’s stay friends.” A cold ending to their lukewarm relationship. He can’t even bring himself to answer her, what could he answer to that? He mostly feels relief and a lingering shame over how he treated her.

 

Nights are tough. He stares at the door to his bedroom, pictures the key turning by itself in the lock, red mist seeping in. Wanda comes into his bedroom again and again, red-eyed and terrible, a succubus that mounts him and bends him to her will. He wakes up rock hard, drenched in sweat, shivering and checking his body. He’s taken to sleeping in his body armor but it’s not enough. Nothing is enough.

 

He sleepwalks through everything, forgetful, always angry. He maps the Compound, memorizes his schedule and hers and knows he only sees the bare minimum of her, knows she too tries to avoid him. It’s not working. He still catches glimpses of her, her perfume after she has left a room, red tendrils still lingering in their training grounds after her session with Vision and Doctor Strange, she’s there, always there.

 

He snaps at Peter during training one day and it’s horrible, the boy’s eyes rounded with hurt and confusion. He had no illusions about coming anywhere near Tony in the boy’s heart but he’d been making progress. He apologizes and the kid accepts it but he knows it fixes nothing.

 

The next morning he gets a call from Bucky. It feels unreal, for a few minutes he’s sure he’s just hallucinating from lack of sleep. Eventually it sinks in and he sits heavily, holding onto the receiver like a lifeline, voice rough with threatening tears.

 

“They fixed me.” Bucky says. “Just rebooted me like a damn computer. It’s not an exact science, you know. All of the old memories are there but I lost a bunch of memories from Romania and what happened at the airport. T’challa filled in some blanks but I had to call Stark to get the whole story from Siberia. He told me everything, sent video even...” his voice trails off. Unsure, like he said too much.

 

“You called Sark before telling me you were awake?” Steve whispers in disbelief.

 

“Well, I was a mess. Wasn’t sure I wanted to stay awake. Figured we shouldn’t get you excited over nothing.” _I was protecting you like you protect me, isn’t that what we do in our co-dependent little dance?_

 

“How long?” Steve whispers. He’s rather not know but…

 

“About two months”.

 

A bitter laugh bubbles through Steve’s chest. “And why would you call now?” He presses his free hand against his eyes, not surprised to find moisture there.

 

“I don’t belong here, Steve. It’s so hot I’m always sweating like a pig. Everything is so weird. Their language, their alphabet, their food. They go around acting so superior all the time. I mean, they fixed me. They took my brain and reconfigured it, you know? A new and improved James Buchanan Barnes. They even gave me a new arm. I’m supposed to be grateful, right? Well, I hate it. It’s black with these golden highlights, it looks like a vase, like it’ll break if I look at it funny. It won’t. It’s vibranium, strong as hell and all but it’s bouncy and it feels strange. I should be grateful but all I can think about is how much I miss my old arm. It was a heavy, Soviet, whirring piece of junk but it was mine, you know? And I was me. I’m trying to find that guy again and I missed you, ok?”

 

It should be comforting, Steve won’t lie to himself and say he’s not affected. Finally a kind word from Bucky after all this time. And yet most of that speech sounds very rehearsed and the whole thing feels weirdly engineered. Steve is useless, too broken to function in a team, constantly looking behind him, afraid of his own shadow. He can practically hear the call from Stark to T’challa behind the scenes “you already have one super soldier, why not complete the set?”

 

Steve hangs up the phone.

 

After Steve’s call with T’challa, Stark agrees to see him that same afternoon, as tired looking as ever, the arc reactor on his chest humming soothingly over his too fast heartbeat. Before Steve can say anything Stark berates him for never going to any of his shrink appointments.

 

Steve just takes it all standing in parade rest, his hands curled into fists behind his back in that room that used to be his office.

 

Tony’s expression softens. “I understand that it must be hard for you and I am sorry…”

 

He is. Steve doesn’t doubt that for one second but Stark is being pragmatic. He needs Wanda and Vision and it’s becoming more and more obvious that they are a package deal.

 

Steve nods. “I’ve spoken to T’challa.”

 

Clearly not news to Stark. “Yeah, you wanna go off and be Captain Wakanda, be my guest. I won’t stop you. Just get some mental health help while you’re at it. You were long overdue even without what happened to you.”

 

Steve nods again, barely suppressing a flinch at the reminder of what Wanda did.

 

“Is your pet Falcon coming with you?”

 

“I…” he realizes he hasn’t even told Sam. They’ve barely exchanged ten words since their return to the States. “No, I think he’s better off here.”

 

“Great. I’ll just schedule a surgery to remove his head from your ass, might hurt a bit.”

 

Steve doesn’t rise up to the bait. He takes a step forward and offers his hand to the other man.

 

“Thank you for everything, Tony.”

 

It’s only a few seconds but still far longer than it is polite to leave a man with his hand outstretched. I haven’t earned it, he thinks absurdly. It’s merely pity and Stark’s good guy persona. He wants to take his hand back, rewind time because even though it’s Stark who will look bad he doesn’t want to admit to himself how much it stings that Tony won’t even give him that much.

 

In the end their hands do meet for a brief moment. Tony’s wearing fingerless gloves, knowing him it’s some tech thing. Perhaps protection, Tony is all about protection.

 

“Take care of yourself, Cap.”

 

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

 

As T’challa’s plane takes off, quiet and unseen, Steve watches the Compound as it becomes smaller and smaller in the distance. All that they could have been are just childish fantasies now. The Avengers as a family. Taking their meals together, watching films, joking around. Enjoying that place that Tony built for them and never wanted to live in, building a stronger team from the ashes of their “Civil War”. And that moment, that guilty little fantasy he has the hardest time letting go of… his shield back in his hands, vibrating like a living thing. “My Dad did make it but he made it for you.” Tony would say simply.

 

“Captain Wakanda” Tony called him but he has no such ambitions. Princess Shuri offers to make him a new uniform and deck him in the finest technology she has to offer. A child prodigy with luminous eyes and manic energy, he can’t help but like her. He accepts some of the tech but balks at the body armor, unwilling to give up his old uniform. He tears off the star and paints it black. The Princess purses her lips at how it clashes with his new gauntlet shield but she says nothing.

 

They allow him some freedom. Treat him kindly with a haughty benevolence that chafes at him. It makes him want to test them, see what it would take for them to turn on him. He was never good at playing by the rules. One look at Bucky by his side is enough to bring him to his senses. His friend who stays mostly silent living a simple life. He tends to his goats. He cleans his gun. If it’s a good night he plays cards with Steve but still he guards his thoughts and only speaks to call Steve’s pathetic bluffs.

 

“They call me the White Wolf,” Bucky tells him one night. They are sitting on their porch, stargazing. “I don’t think they have a name for you yet. Guess they figure you won’t stick around.”

 

He calls Tony that night but can’t get past FRIDAY. “No, not an emergency exactly. Just to find out how things are going. Whether there’s been any trouble with Wanda.” To find a way to say take me back, please send her away and take us in, live with the man who strangled your mother, break bread with him, shake his hand. Because that’s what Tony does, he gives and gives and in the end Bucky is innocent and he belongs back home.

 

FRIDAY guards her Master fiercely. “All is well at the Compound,” she informs him and thanks him for his call.

 

He tells Bucky the whole story eventually. Stumbling to find the words, shame painting his cheeks crimson. This strange approximation of his friend with the glossy hair and serene eyes, he’s not sure he’ll get him to understand even but he has to try. He even makes excuses for Wanda, after all he trusted her, he championed her, he voted her in the team. He explains she was a confused kid, how HYDRA tricked her, the scepter corrupted her. How none of it would have happened if Stark hadn’t thrown her in a cell with that collar to be tortured again. She couldn’t control herself.

 

“Oh Steve,” is all Bucky says, his eyes brimming with tears and Steve reaches blindly until he rests his forehead on a cool metal shoulder. Bucky still has no words but he cards his flesh fingers in Steve’s hair and whispers soothing nonsense. “It’s gonna be ok,” he says. Steve wishes he could believe it.

 

Natasha sends frequent updates. Dispassionate news bulletins that Steve wishes he could just ignore and yet he stops whatever he’s doing and reads them the moment he hears the notification ding. Back at the Compound Stark is preparing with an urgency unfelt in Wakanda, like whatever impending doom Tony is sensing could never touch them there. T’challa attends to his regal duties, Shuri creates beautiful technology, Steve and Bucky train with each other, rustle up meals that barely resemble what they are trying to make, play with Wakandan children and feed Bucky’s goats. Steve ends up counting the days to T’challa’s rare visits just to have something to break the routine, one more person to train with.

 

The King’s frequent visits to the US start making sense when Steve realizes he’s been angling to join the Avengers. It hurts. It’s wrong. Tony hasn’t accepted yet, probably feels he can’t trust his loyalties. Steve can’t really blame him.

 

Steve tortures himself sometimes with International news. Wakanda has a state channel but it won’t deign to report on the Avengers especially since they are not doing anything too noteworthy. He sees them in news from all over the world, though. Regrouping. Doing publicity tours. Spiderman is still a reserve member and not appearing anywhere. The wizard, Doctor Strange, refuses to do any interviews and is always scowling at the camera in his few photographs with the team. Tony is always at the center, smiling or joking around Rhodes to his right and Sam next to him. Natasha next to them, still blonde, strangely alone even as she poses with the group. Clint is still retired. Vision is always solemn in his well-tailored suits, his metal skin gleaming and Wanda is always next to him, often looking at him instead of the camera.

 

Steve tries to see himself there. Wanda doesn’t even remember what she did. Why can’t he just forget as well? Why can’t he forgive her? He could be right there next to Nat, perhaps she wouldn’t look so alone then. It is not just a fantasy. It’s something to work for.  


End file.
